Drawing from my own Drawing

 

This is a deliberation on drawing.
Let's look at the dictionary definition and the popularly understood meaning of drawing:
'graphic representation by lines of an object or idea'

As a technique used in the context of material manipulation, there's another definition that I am drawn to (pun intended!) and that is:
'to stretch out as a long line'.

While someone may dismiss this articulation as a mere play of words, for those who know my love for linguistics, would know why and how the semiotic lens has helped me unpack the notion of drawing for myself.

In my case, there seems to be an overlap of both these notions of drawing, where there is representation yes, but fore-mostly there is a pulling out of spirit, as an abstraction.
There is a predisposition to what I call  'elemental representation'. Wherein, only a part of what I see, be it people, objects or even spaces is extracted. 

While it may seem incomplete, it will still be recognizable. It will in all likelihood be able to capture the essence of that which is seen and yet be loose enough for the viewer to create different narratives around it. 

For many years, I affirmatively declared that 'I cannot draw human beings', perhaps because I didn't consider myself doing justice to the nuances of the complex, dynamic natural form that human beings are.

However, it took me years to realize what the actual problem was. It was with my idea of what 'drawing' meant for me as a form of expression and later as the vocabulary of a creative practitioner. It took some serious unlearning of the early fine art training, spurts of intuitive explorations, deliberate unbiased reflection (the most challenging bit!) and watching some of my students draw with gay abandon, to realize that:

a) I 'see' parts while still being cognizant of the whole and therefore the outcome becomes an offspring of an intuitive vision and not a blatant unabridged replica.
So, in the case of humans, I find the head to be the most interesting part that can be truly representative of the whole person(hood); where planes shift so mellifluously, yet unpredictably and almost without prior notice, unlike the hair!
And in all this, I find the face to be the negative space, given meaning by the silhouette of the head that encompasses it.

b) I 'follow lines', where anything can be broken into lines, but when these lines are imagined as a cluster, then they produce an aggregated image that is whole in its own right.
And this is where the strands of hair and there negotiations with gravity help me use them as a companion to generate the silhouettes.

In other words, freedom as a value when exercised in expression, cannot help but translate to freedom in perception and interpretation by the viewer(s). So, peel yourself away from the recurrent urge of realism, envision a version of your conviction and just DRAW.....